White Wins OVC Heptathlon

OXFORD, Ala. – Just six weeks ago, Lauren White had finished the SIUE basketball season and began her quest to compete in the heptathlon at the Ohio Valley Conference Outdoor Championships.

On Friday, White won the event with 5,001 points to edge Murray State's Jabreuna Brimlett with 4,932 points.

"This is very tough," White said. "I never thought it would be this bad with the field events and the running events. All together this is tough physically and mentally. I'm glad I pushed through it. I give credit to all these girls who do this all the time because coming from basketball this is tough. I'm thankful for basketball."

White won two events at the Championships with a victory in the shot put (36 feet, 3 inches/11.05m) on day one and the javelin (123-2.25/37.54m) on day two. Her 800 time was second, winning a sprint over the final 100 meters against Brimlett.

"I just finished the 800. That is a serious race. I had never actually ran before today, and I don't know how they do that," said White.

"This just tells you how competitive she is and how intentional she was about learning events she had never competed in before," said SIUE jumps coach Joey Pacione. "The attention she brought to training every day was huge."

"Coach Pacione assured me that my training has me prepared," added White. "You just have to go do it and be aggressive."

White, who added an eight-place finish in the open high jump later in the day, wasn't the only SIUE competitor to make it to the medal stand.

Martinus Mitchell was consistent in all six of his throws and won the discus with a winning toss of 168-4.25 (51.31m).

"I've been doing it all year long," said Mitchell. "I really wasn't nervous."

"Martinus has been working his butt off," said SIUE Head Coach Scott Block. "At the beginning of the season, we really decided we needed to work on his consistency, and today he was Mr. Consistency. All of his throws were within two meters of each other.

Haley Miller also made the medal stand, placing second in the 3,000 steeplechase. She ran the event in 10:37.58, just one second behind Eastern Kentucky's Ciara Scott. It was the second fastest time in SIUE history, missing the school record by .01 seconds set by Claire Brown in 2014.